Travel Blog #9: Storming the Castle

Following my day trip to Hiroshima I decided to take some time off for R&R. Contrary to what I had thought, Osaka wasn’t the best hub city. Since the AirBnB I picked for $21 a night didn’t have a great location, I was facing 40 minute trips to Osaka station every time I did a day trip. On evenings when I returned from a day trip, most of the city (save for arcades, bars, and hostess clubs) were closed by 8 p.m. In short, I was pretty ready to move on.

August 31: Once I regained my mental and emotional strength, I set out for Himeji to see the castle. Known for being one of the “finest surving example of prototypical Japanese castle architecture” (Wikipedia), Himeji stands tall upon a hill.

I passed through a market street…

…and arrived at Kokkoen garden. Here I purchased a combined garden and castle pass for ¥1,040. Since I have no idea what most (any) of the plants were, I’ll just leave the pictures below.

About midway through my journey in the garden I came upon a tea house. Here I took part in my own personal traditional Japanese tea ceremony. For ¥500 I got excellent tea and some type of sweet (tasted like marzapan with red bean).

From the garden you can either walk about 10 minutes one way and get right to the castle gate, or walk in a big spiral for about an hour to get to there. I decided on the latter. Seeing the castle after that walk was well worth it.

For dinner I went to a local all you can eat Japanese barbeque place. While the agreed upon price was ¥3,500 (and I asked multiple times to make sure I was ordering off the correct menu), the manager attempted to charge me for everyting – which amounted to about ¥8,600. After about ten minutes of him giving me a ton of attitude and us arguing back and forth (with help from Google Translate), he threw his arms up in the air in frustration and gave me the correct price. Did I mention this happened while the last train back to Osaka was leaving in less than 20 minutes? (Don’t worry, I just barely made it).

September 1: After the frustration of the previous evening I had another stressful day of travel to Kyoto. Due to a combination of terrible directions, an utter lack of English signs anywhere, and generally rude customer service, it took me an extra four hours to arrive. Fun fact: while the ATMs at convenience stores offer 20 different languages, those at BANKS (or at least the one I went to) only offer Japanese (and are only for Japanese people).

My luck seemed to turn up when I arrived at my AirBnB. It was absolutely gorgeous! A semi-modernized traditional Japanese home turned into a guest house. After a week of not-so-great conditions in Osaka I was so thankful. I took off my huge backpack, settled in, and then immediately set out for Nijo Castle.

While Nijo Castle is regarded as the most popular tourist destination in Kyoto, it closes its gates to new visitors at 4 p.m. – even in peak tourist season. Myself and a crowd of about 50 tourists from all over the world discovered this at about 4:05 p.m. They made no exceptions. (I also spent about 10 minutes considering scaling the wall of the castle)

Finally burnt out, I decided to take the rest of the day to relax. A quick Google search helped me find a great café for reading, where I spent the next five hours drinking tea and, well, reading.